No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime storyamusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.
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  • Science — Discovery, inquiry, and the wonders of the natural world

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